


Don't you fret

by orphan_account



Series: The first and second Witness [3]
Category: Sleepy Hollow (TV)
Genre: F/M, as usual these two are literally to cute for this world
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-05
Updated: 2013-11-05
Packaged: 2017-12-31 13:57:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1032488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first time Ichabod Crane calls Abigail Mills 'Abbie'.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Don't you fret

**Author's Note:**

> Companion piece for my fic 'A Little fall of Rain' found here: 
> 
> http://archiveofourown.org/works/982748  
> (Also changed headcanon a bit for previous fic, as Ichabod gets really sick with a fever from the start to here)

The first time is like sunlight through whiskey, Abbie thinks, and that frightens her more than a little. 

It does something. It unlocks a little box that wasn't so much locked away for safe-keeping but was more of dumped in the backyard as junk but kept just to be safe, in case the valuable things locked away got destroyed. Just in case. Something secret that Abbie Mills hadn't known, or missed, or wished for.

You see, she is 'Miss Mills' when Ichabod is being polite, 'Miss Mills' when Ichabod is delirious with fever, 'Lieutenant' when he wanted something or when he had found something or when he was being snarky like he could be. She was 'Madam' when Ichabod had a question he was dying to ask but wouldn't actually ask. 

And to other cops she is 'Mills'. It's hard and quick to the point, it's no-nonsense. Abbie doesn't so much as prefer it as has grown into it in her time on the force, so it's fine. If someone cuts out a quick and harsh 'Mills!' they have her attention immediately. 

To Jenny she is Abbs, or Abbie, or any combination of the two but never Abigail because they are _never_ Abigail and Jennifer Mills unless they were in trouble at school again and their Principal was giving them that 'I can't be too harsh on you two because you don't technically have parents anymore' look which they both equally hated. 

And even then they were Jennifer  _and_ Abigail Mills and never Jennifer Mills and never Abigail Mills. They must be together or they are not. 

And Ichabod is Crane. Ichabod is always Crane he is never anything else, except when delirious with fever, sure, but that was once and she just can't get the sound  _Ichabod_ to come out in a way that doesn't choke on her tongue because what the hell kinda name is 'Ichabod Crane'. 

But Abbie bites it down, that sound on his tongue, because she might be crying just a little bit and it's time to put on a brave face like she never got to with Corbin. 

Because Corbin had his head separated from his body, and there is no closure you can get from a headless corpse on a metal slab, no last touch, no hand squeeze, no last look. Just looking down at a coffin while you fight the bile with nothing but an empty stomach.

So Ichabod calls her Abbie instead of Miss Mills and she takes his hand and tries to make her fingers say  _please don't_ , because as stubborn as he is he just won't listen. "This is the only way."

Everything in Abbie just screams horseshit. She wants to hit the table, she wants to shoot something, maybe a horseless, headless— whatever, because it may not work but damn would it make her feel better because this isn't fair, it's not fair, it shouldn't be ending so quickly but Crane is just too damn stubborn.

But she doesn't. She takes Ichabod's hand, and she holds it. 

One last touch, one last anchor, one last chance because he might fall and she might be able to stop him. 

Or she might fall down with him, that in itself doesn't seem so bad. 

"I've lived on borrowed time, more than any man deserves," Ichabod said. "And through these centuries, against the impossibility that we would find each other," that little smile that he gave hurt, hurt in a way Abbie neither wanted nor recognized. Something awful like affection. "We did. And I am most grateful for it."

Abbie bit against her tongue, smashed against the back of her teeth because to hell with the good of the many. "How can you be so calm about this?"

"I'm terrified."

No, she lied. The truth hurt more than affection.

They are the two goddamn witnesses, the first two, the stupid first witnesses of the apocalypse and why the hell would whoever the hell runs the office upstairs bring him back only to let him go now when Abbie's just found him because that is complete and utter bullshit.  

And she's right, she lost Jenny, she lost Corbin, you can't say goodbye to ghosts you made and headless corpses.

Ichabod calls her Abbie when he is hurting, when he feels like he might be hurting her in some severe, horrid way. Both, in the usual case.

Ichabod might call her Abbie when he is lonely, when he misses his long dead wife, when she says something that he might not understand but it endears her to him anyway, she is Abbie when she tries to use her impressive knack of sarcasm to bewit and bewile his eighteenth century humor. He calls her Abbie because he has earned the right to call her Abbie, she realises, something that it took Corbin months of awkward conversations and trust and training and learning and somehow Ichabod has been in her life for half that and she is perfectly okay with him calling her Abbie. And it doesn't make sense. 

Abbie doesn't need it to make sense, oddly. It simply does. 

"Ichabod?" Abbie said. "Ichabod, please stay with me."

He doesn't: He's stubborn just to be stubborn, at this point. With his stupid ponytail and his stupid manners and his stupid, stupid two hundred year old clothing and the stupid car windows and the electric teakettle in her kitchen and Corbin's rustic cabin and the stupid luffas and his hatred of plastic and  _no_. 

"You—" Abbie tries, cradeling his stupid stubborn head, "You, no. You don't get to do this and be stupid." 

The scorpions and the sleep tea come to mind, but Abbie has neither scorpions nor the ancient reciepe for sleep-inducing tea at hand. She just has a little faith. Less patience. Budding abandonment issues and a two hundred and fifty year old partner who can't tell the difference between the question 'paper or plastic?' at the grocery store. 

"I'm supposed to take you to a Mets game," Abbie said. "Cold Beer and worse hotdogs, remember?"


End file.
